by Tracey Ward
“Trent!” I scream. “Trent, help me!”
I take two steady breaths, make sure I’m calm and breathing even, then I take a large gulp and dive under again to give it all to Ryan. When I break the surface for more air, to buy more seconds of Ryan’s life, I see Trent come up inside the hull.
“You have to help me,” I say quickly, speaking faster than I’ve ever spoken in my life. “Ryan is trapped. I can’t get him loose and he’s going to die. I’m giving him air but he’s stuck.”
Trent nods quickly then dives under the water without a word. I take another large breath and dive under after him. While Trent works to free Ryan, I press my mouth to his again. I do this several more times, more times than I can count. Trent has to come to the surface twice for more air, but he keeps diving back down. He doesn’t quit. I’m starting to feel dizzy when I go down again and press my mouth to Ryan’s. I barely notice that he doesn’t grab onto me. But then it strikes me that he doesn’t respond at all and when I pull away, I watch in horror as bubbles of air escape his lips, passing over his closed eyes.
“Ryan!” I shout, knowing he can’t hear me and that I’m wasting my own air. But I can’t hold it in.
Finally Trent has him free and his body floats upward. We both grab onto him and yank him toward the surface, kicking as hard as we can as we pull his dead weight with us.
When we have our heads above water in the hull, Trent turns Ryan around in his arms. He puts Ryan’s back to his front and wraps his arms around him like he’s giving him a weird hug. Then they both sink slightly as Trent puts all his strength into squeezing hard and fast on Ryan’s stomach. Ryan lurches forward, his face falling in the water. I reach out to steady them, to try to help Trent keep him afloat.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, my voice shaking.
“I’m getting the water out of his lungs,” Trent grunts, then he jerks on Ryan again. Nothing. Trent’s calm face is pinched in concentration and anxiety. “Come on, come on.”
I hold onto Ryan’s face with both my hands as I tread water with my feet. I carefully brush his hair out of his closed eyes, willing them to open. To be brown and beautiful and alive.
“Come on,” I whisper, chanting with Trent. The sound of our low voices fills the hull of the boat, rebounding off the water and echoing around us. “Come on, Ryan. Please.”
Trent sinks again, jerks hard on Ryan and I get a face full of water when Ryan suddenly spurts and sputters. He chokes violently for several seconds then vomits into the darkness. I don’t even care. He’s fighting for breath, breathing in and out, no matter how raggedly, and I start crying my eyes out when his own eyes flutter open and he looks at me.
“Ryan,” I breathe, my voice coated in tears.
He coughs, more water spurting out of his mouth violently. He reaches out blindly to grab onto the hull and hold himself up but his hands slip off the smooth sides. Trent and I hold onto him tightly, both of us giving up our arms to keep him afloat as he tries to get his bearings.
He takes several ragged breaths before saying hoarsely, “I can’t swim.”
I laugh despite my tears, taking his face in my hands again and staring into his open eyes. At his mouth pulling in air and blowing it out forcefully. His pulse throbbing at his throat, beating with his heart, moving through my veins.
Chapter Eighteen
Ryan isn’t kidding. He seriously can’t swim.
That’s going to be a problem. It’s one we solve by finding a piece of floating debris, a task that is disturbingly easy with almost all of the Colony boats blown up and burning in the water. A couple are heading for the hills, back up the Sound as fast as their hobbled ships can carry them, but most of the boats are burned beyond salvage. It didn’t take long. The Vashons laid their armada to waste in no time. Almost like they had planned for years for such an attack.
As we swim/paddle toward the opposite shore, I wonder what this night means for the Vashons ‘uneasy treaty’ with the Colonists.
I also wonder what provoked the Colonists to attack.
When we make it to shore all three of us lay on the ground breathing heavily and shivering. The water was cold, but being out in the open while wet feels colder. We need to make camp somewhere nearby soon and start a fire or we’ll all get pneumonia and die.
“We need to get moving,” I groan, sitting up. I feel weighed down by exhaustion and wet clothes.
When I look over at the boys I find both of their eyes closed.
“Hey!” I shout, clapping my hands hard. They both startle, their eyes shooting open. “No sleeping, not here. Especially you, Trent. The last thing we need is you dying in your sleep.”
He sits up slowly. “I don’t have a concussion.”
“Good news. Unless you want hypothermia, it’s time to move.”
“It’s not cold enough for that,” Ryan protests. He’s still lying down.
I lean over him, my face near his and my hair hanging around him. “It’s cold enough to get sick. Get your ass up.”
He reaches up to run his hand over my cheek, back into my hair. “You saved my life.”
“Don’t get mushy on me. Get up.”
He pulls my face down farther and kisses me soundly on the mouth. I don’t fight it because it’s warm, it’s him and he’s alive. I can’t stop to think about how happy I am that he didn’t die out there. I can’t think about what would happen to me if I lost him. Where my heartbeats would go without his to follow.
I pull away. “Move. Now.”
“So bossy,” he grumbles, but he gets up.
We’ve come ashore in an old industrial area. This is good and bad. Good because it’s probably abandoned. Bad because there won’t be much to make a fire with and we absolutely have to have a fire.
“Where do you think we are?” I ask quietly as we slowly make our way through the rusted rubble.
“Judging by the light in that direction,” Trent says, pointing to our left, “I’d say we’re just south of the stadiums.”
“Perfect. So we have to get by the Colonies to get home.”
“We have to go through the valley,” Ryan says.
“The what?”
“On Crenshaw’s map. Remember the valley between the stadiums and the dark shadowy area. He said the space between was the Valley of the Shadow of Death.”
“And the black area was the portal to Hell,” I say, remembering it suddenly.
Ryan cocks an eyebrow at me. “He told us not to go there.”
“He also told us not to go to The Hive.”
“My point exactly.”
“We can’t avoid it,” I protest, feeling frustrated.
Trent stops short suddenly, looking around with his wicked hawk eyes. “We’ll make camp here.”
“Okay, why here?”
“Because over there,” he says, pointing ahead and to the left of us, “are the Colonies, just two blocks away. And over there,” he points to our right, “another two blocks away are the cannibals.”
“Are you kidding me?” I hiss, immediately going tense. “We’re near the cannibals? How do you know that?”
He frowns at me like I’m stupid. “Because I’ve seen them.”
“Of course you have. We can’t stay here.”
“We can’t go back either and we definitely don’t want to go any farther forward. Not at night.”
“Why not at night? The Colonists won’t be able to see us as well.”
“I’m not worried about the Colonists. At night, you have to worry about the cannibals. They’re very territorial, they live underground and they only come out at night. Right now, they can see better than I can. A lot better.”
“Oh man,” I moan, wrapping my arms around myself. “So right now not only do we have to worry about zombies and pneumonia, we have to worry about being kidnapped by Colonists and being eaten alive by cannibals?”
“There are also a lot of mosquitos this close to the water.”
“Oh my God,”
I mutter.
“We’ll be alright,” Ryan tells me. “Let’s start a fire and—“
“A fire? Are you crazy? It’ll call them all right to us.”
Ryan shakes his head. “We have to have a fire, Joss. We need to dry off, to warm up. It can’t be helped.”
“We’ll go over there inside that shack,” Trent says, pointing to an old security building at the entrance of the parking lot we’re standing in. “We’ll bust out the windows if they’re not already gone to let the smoke out, but the building should block most of the light from the fire.”
“Fine,” I say reluctantly, knowing they’re right. “But when we die, I want you both to remember I told you so.”
“Noted,” Ryan agrees.
Luckily the shack is a complete mess. Complete mess means things to burn. Things that have been inside and kept from most of the elements, most importantly moisture. Only one window is broken. Trent wastes no time breaking two more while Ryan and I get to work building our fire inside an old metal trash can. It’s easier than you’d think, but then again, we’ve had practice. Lots and lots of practice.
Once it’s burning in the center of the room, we huddle around it. I drape my torn, wet coat over a chair to let it dry faster. I’m shivering from head to toe so when Ryan wraps his arm around me and pulls me in close to his body, I don’t fight it. I tense and my breathing gets tight, but I try to hide it. I don’t want to hate this. I want to like it, and a big part of me really, really does but a little part of me is still afraid. Maybe it always will be.
“Why didn’t they search us for weapons when we went to see Marlow?” I ask, suddenly remembering I had meant to ask Ryan before.
He nods thoughtfully. “I wondered that too. Every time I’ve been in to see him, my weapons were taken.”
“Did they just forget?”
Ryan chuckles. “You don’t forget something like that. Not working for Marlow.”
“Not if you want to live,” Trent agrees.
“So I’m not crazy? It was weird.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“He’s going to be mad about his boat.”
“No, he won’t be, not really, but he’ll act mad,” Ryan says darkly. “He’ll use it as a way to get something from us.”
“He never meant for us to make it back alive did he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh come on. He sent us there in the U.S.S. Sold You Out. It couldn’t have been more obvious we were associated with The Hive and the Vashons obviously don’t like them.”
“Yeah, but why?” Ryan insists. “Why send us there to have them kill us? I think he wanted to see if it would work.”
“He wanted us to draw them out,” Trent says. “Probably take a few of their people prisoner to barter for something.”
“What though? Land? Turnips?” I ask.
“Probably guns.”
I shiver involuntarily as I remember the black barrel of Ali’s gun pointed at my face.
“Do you think that gun was loaded?” I ask quietly.
“It was,” Ryan replies softly, his grip on my upper arm tightening.
I nod, knowing he’s right. I knew it when I looked at her face. She was ready, willing and fully able to kill me on the spot. But I don’t hate her for it. I don’t blame her at all. She didn’t do it to protect her soft bed or a fluffy pillow. It wasn’t for the sake of central air or a good hot meal at the end of the day. It was for her family. For her daughter and her husband. For the people she loves.
Sitting beside this fire with Ryan’s arm around my shoulder, I can easily understand that.
“So Marlow will be mad when we get back that we lost his boat and didn’t bring him his bounty,” I surmise, “and Crenshaw will be mad that we went to The Hive first and pissed off the Vashons. The Vashons are mad at us, probably all of them want us dead because they think we brought the Colonies to their door in an ambush.”
“By now word has gotten out about what Trent and I have been up to, my fight in The Hive not sanctioned by the Hyperion, going behind the backs of our brothers. We’ll be thrown out of the gang.”
“Will they hurt you?” I ask.
Trent grins, his face lit in a macabre mask by the firelight. “They’re welcome to try.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, feeling like an asshole. I drug them into this and now their lives are ruined. “You’re both obviously welcome to come live with me in the loft.”
“Don’t worry about it, we’ll figure something out,” Ryan tells me, sounding unconcerned. It’s both a relief and a little bit painful that he doesn’t take me up on the offer.
“You two should get some sleep,” Trent says. “I’ll stay up and take first watch.”
“Are you sure, man?”
“Yeah, I got it. I’m not tired.”
“Good, cause I’m exhausted. Wake me up in a couple hours. I’ll take next shift.”
“You got it.”
“I’m not tired,” I tell them, staring into the fire. “I’ll stay up too.”
Ryan frowns at me. “Are you sure?”
I smile weakly, nodding. “Yeah, I’m sure. I need to relax a little. Come down from what’s happened tonight. You sleep, though. You have to be tired from…”
He grins. “Nearly dying.”
My smile fades. “Don’t do that again.”
“I don’t plan on it.”
“Good.”
“Thanks, by the way. To both of you.” He looks at Trent, his mouth going tight. “I’d be dead if it weren’t for you guys.”
Trent shakes his head. “We didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done for us. It’s nothing special. Go to sleep.”
Ryan nods silently before sprawling out beside me. He’s between me and the door again, a position I’m beginning to think he’ll always take. It speaks volumes and I’m finally beginning to understand the language it’s written in. I’m not fluent yet, but I’m getting the gist of it.
It’s not long before Ryan is snoring away. I look across the fire at Trent, giving him a small smile.
“So,” I say softly, “how much trouble are you guys going to be in really?”
Trent watches me for a second, his face blank. Finally, he says, “A lot.”
I nod, hating it but knowing it’s true. I’m glad he’s willing to be real with me about it. “What can I do?”
“Nothing. What’s done is done.”
“I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to do this to you both.”
“It’ll be worse for Ryan than for me. They were like a family to him. I was only there because of Ryan and Kevin.”
“How did you all end up together?”
He smirks. “How do any of us end up together?”
“You don’t want to talk about it.”
“Not any more than you do. Don’t feel bad about it, though.”
“Which part?” I chuckle unhappily.
“Any of it. I don’t mind and Ryan wouldn’t have done things any differently. If you needed his help, he was going to give it.”
I frown, shaking my head slightly. I’m too embarrassed to look him in the eyes anymore.
“I can’t understand that.”
“Are you sure?”
I shake my head again.
“How many times did you go back under the water for him? How many breathes did you give up? How many would you have given?”
All of them. Every last one of them. I never would have stopped.
I feel dizzy. Disoriented. I take several deep breathes, trying to get my bearings. Trying to find my center, my numb, but it’s been gone too long. I can’t get it back. I want to retreat into myself and hide from everything, all of it that’s not working and the things that are working too well, but I can’t. I’m in the thick of it now. I’m living life surrounded by so many more things than I realized were out there, so many more dangers than I ever dreamed of. There’s so much more to fear than just the Risen, the Colonists and the gangs. Ther
e’s so much more to gain. To lose.
I look up at Trent, about to ask him to tell me the story of how he met up with Ryan and Kevin, even if it means I have to tell my own in return. I’m ready for that. I think I can do it. I at least want to try. But the look on his face freezes my breath in my throat.
“What is it?” I whisper, knowing whatever it is, it isn’t good.
Trent stares at me patiently, his weird, light eyes looking white in the firelight.
“We aren’t walking out of here in the morning,” he replies, his deep voice vibrating through my bones.
I swallow hard. “Why not?”
“Because they’re coming.”
My vision goes funny, fuzzy. I’m having trouble breathing. “No one is coming. No one knows we—“
“I can hear them,” he interrupts me, his voice hushed and calm. “They’re not even trying to hide themselves. They want us to know.”
“Why?” I whisper, my eyes glued on his. My ears straining to hear the evil that speaks only to him.
“Because,” he says, his voice dipping lower. I can hear it then, behind his words. Footsteps. Slow, unhurried. Patient. “They want us to run.”
I bite my lip until I taste blood, willing myself not to cry out. Not to jump up and run, to leave them both behind.
“Who?”
I hear the screech of metal over the pavement. It’s not far off. A blade being drug over the ground. A warning. A promise.
“You know who.”
I nod hard.
“The cannibals.”
Chapter Nineteen
Vashon Island
Ali stands at the edge of the water, separated from the rest of the crowd. They’re shouting with excitement because they think they’ve won. But she knows this enemy better than most. Not all of them were there at the start. Not all of them watched the evil grow, seeding from one man, one idea, to ten then twenty then a hundred. Thousands. Tonight, this victory, it’s only the beginning of a war and that cold realization helps her understand that the life they’ve lived for the last ten years has been on borrowed time. This was always going to happen. It would always come to this.
This was always how it was going to end.